A Sermon for Passion Sunday
by Dr. Robert Crouse
St. James’ Church, Halifax
5 April, 1987
“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise
dominion over them, and they that are great, exercise authority upon them.
But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let
him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
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Today, we begin the final two weeks of Lent, the solemn
season of Passiontide; and the scripture lessons, setting the tone of this
season, remind us of what the sacrificial death of Christ is; in some way,
the model and pattern of our own Christian lives.
The Epistle lesson, from the Epistle to the Hebrews,
speaks of what Christ has done for us: he is “the mediator of the new
covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first covenant, they which are called might receive the
promise of eternal inheritance.” That is to say, our Saviour, Christ, both
God and man, by his pure and perfect sacrifice, freely offered, pays the
price of our transgressions, destroys our enmity, and opens up for us the
way of our return to God, and life eternal. Thus, the sacrifice of Christ
is something done for us, once for all, something which we could not do,
something which we can only faithfully and thankfully accept.
But the sacrifice of Christ is not only something done
for us, once for all; it is also something which must be done in us, in our
own minds and hearts, day by day. Our thankful acceptance of Christ’s work
for us must change us inwardly, must transform our minds and hearts; as the
Epistle expresses it, must “purify our conscience from dead works to serve
the living God.”
That is precisely the message of today’s Gospel lesson;
it speaks to us of the inner transformation of our own lives; it speaks of
a very fundamental change in attitude and aspiration which must be ours, if
we would live in the humble obedience of faithful servants, “even as the Son
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life
a ransom for many.”
That is to say, the way of Christ’s Passion demands in us
an inner change of direction, a reversal of perspective, a change of
attitude, a different aspiration. In today’s Gospel story, the attitude of
the natural man is perfectly represented by James and John, and by their
mother, and by the rest of the disciples. Zebedee’s wife was proud of her
two sons, who had been among the earliest and closest followers of Jesus,
and she thought that Jesus ought to do something special for them. “Grant
that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on
thy left, in thy kingdom.” Her ambition seems natural enough, and her
straightforward honesty is really rather touching. She just wanted the best
for her boys.
James and John shared their mother’s attitude, and so did
the rest of the disciples. But Jesus gathered them all around him, and
taught them a very fundamental lesson about what discipleship must mean.
“Ye know,” he says, “that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over
them”. That is to say, there are certain worldly ways of doing things and
looking at things: for the Gentiles, greatness is a matter of worldly power
and domination – having one’s own way. But, in the kingdom of God, says
Jesus, that is not the way things are: “It shall not be so among you” –
your greatness is the humble obedience of servants.
The points is that the Kingdom of God requires an
inversion, an overturning, of our natural worldliness: “whosoever will be
great among you, let him be your minister; whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant.”
There is the essential meaning of Passiontide for our own
inner lives. When we celebrate our Saviour’s Passion, we celebrate at once
a kingship and a crucifixion. To the world, that seems a contradiction:
foolishness to Greeks, a stumbling-block to Jews. It’s a strange kingship,
surely, and one which the world finds incomprehensible. Pilate didn’t know
what to make of it: “Art thou a king, then”, he asked. “The princes of the
Gentiles exercise dominion.” But what kind of dominion is this? Here is no
dominion but humility and obedience; here is no monarchy but the monarchy
of sacrificial love; but that is a dominion which endures when all worldly
dominions are long gone in dust and ashes.
Lent leads into Passiontide, and it is in the Passion of
Jesus that all the lessons of Lent are summed up. The whole point of the
teachings and disciplines of Lent is that the demons of worldliness, the
demons of false and empty ambitions and aspirations, the demons of
self-seeking, should be cast out of us: “It shall not be so among you”;
and that our souls should be filled with the living bread from heaven, the
Word of God himself, the word of obedient and sacrificial love, which is
both death and resurrection: death to our old and worldly nature, but the
new birth in us of life which is eternal.
The sacrifice of Christ is something done for us – a
sacrifice once offered, perfect and sufficient. But that sacrifice is also
something done in us, day by day. It must have its way in the
transformation of our minds and hearts, our attitude and aspirations.
Here today, we celebrate the sacrifice of Calvary, in
bread and wine, in signs of body broken, and blood outpoured. We celebrate
the presence of the sacrifice of Calvary – the sacrifice of Christ’s
obedience, to be our spirits’ food and drink. That is the deepest meaning
of our worship, and that is the principle of our obedient life in the midst
of the chaos of a disobedient world.
“The princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over
them…but it shall not be so among you”; your life is to be the imitation
of the Passion of your Saviour, Christ, “who came to minister, and to give
his life a ransom for many.”
